Earlier today I was writing about how we are in a full blown constitutional crisis now. Then I realized that we aren’t. The crisis is over and the Supreme Court chose to abandon the constitution. The crisis was happening before this decision was made, but very few people were aware or alarmed about it. We are now in a state where I doubt there’s any legal recourse. We’ve moved on to another stage and that terrifies me.
Exactly this. It’s critically important that we prevent trump and his fascist goons from getting control of this power. But that in itself doesn’t address the really big problem here. Living at the whim of a benevolent king is still living under a king. I honestly think this is it. The constitutional republic is over in every meaningful way beyond window dressing. Given the authority of the Supreme Court, I don’t see a legal fix for this. This is dark AF.
I get it. This is how government functions according to the constitution. Please understand however, under this new interpretation there is no effective legal check on the executive doing anything at all. Yes, it’s not official for the president to do that, but there is no enforcement mechanism, and the president now has authority to coerce anyone or any institution. I know it is difficult to grasp the implications of that, but that is in fact what the Supreme Court did today.
Like, why even bother with the election at all? Biden can just not participate in it, and stay in power as long as he does it as an official act. The Supreme Court just ruled that he’s allowed to do that.
You are confusing the United States that existed until this decision with the United States that exists after this decision. As long as it’s an official act, the president can now do whatever it wants. If the supremes court objects, the president and threaten or assassinate the justices as long as it’s an official act. The President is now effectively a king. Read Sotomayor’s dissent in this decision. She explicitly states this.
Sotomayor’s written dissent explicitly says that this decision makes the US President a king that and can now act with impunity. This is effectively the end of the republic as described by the constitution.
Some in this thread think that ‘chaos’ would emerge if the party replaced Biden and that would hurt the party’s chance of defeating trump. You are correct that there would be a media frenzy, and weeks of exhaustive, drama chasing coverage. It would absolutely dominate the media narrative, and be pounded into the entire voting population’s psyche. You know what else? That would be a wonderful, wonderful thing. It would totally disarm trump’s ability to drive the media narrative for much of the rest of the election. Whatever deficit that exists of national awareness for the new candidate would be erased very quickly. That candidate would be gifted months of desperate, free, media coverage. It’s actually a great strategy. That being the case, I’m sure the DNC and the party elders will never attempt something so obviously effective since they are terrible at politics and their cowardly approaches to both campaigns and governing are ultimately the reason our democracy is in such an existential crisis to begin with.
And…the rest of us have to pay the price of his hubris. Just like we’re paying the price for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s hubris. And Feinstein’s hubris. And Hillary’s hubris.
The Republicans are pure, self-interested evil. But, all of consequences of their awfulness is actively fueled by the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to mount a meaningful opposition.
The only silver lining to Biden’s pathetic display yesterday, is the prospect that this moment may represent the last few stammering gasps of boomer domination in the US. Thanks for the music and the computers, now get the fuck out of the way so younger people can start cleaning up the mess you made.
Ok, sounds like the Supreme Court is just sorta all-in on institutional corruption. Got it.
The ethos of these people is largely about enforcing the dominion of men over women.* This divorce stance is about disempowering women. Abortion is about disempowering women. The move they are about to make against contraception, about removing agency from women. Age of consent, ditto. Given the opportunity, they would absolutely remove women’s right to vote, own property, maintain credit, and on and on. This is the culture that’s dominating the Republican Party and they face very little meaningful opposition right now.
As an organization, they are actively and intentionally interfering with electoral politics. Their lifetime appointments were designed to remove them from that dynamic, but they have decided to bypass that principle. The structure of our federal government is designed to deal with problems like this by having the other branches check them when they step out of line like this. Unfortunately, neither of the other branches have shown any desire to take action. As a result we are currently caught in a self-reinforcing death spiral of anti-democratic corruption that will eventually undo the union unless something changes. What a time to be alive.
Stories like this reinforce my suspicion that the US deserves to be declining the way we are.
“The arts help us learn to be more than consumers. They teach problem-solving skills, train children to work together and develop empathy for others.”
The prevailing culture in the US right now doesn’t value education in any regard other than workplace enablement. We want dutiful, controllable populace that contributes to GDP, and that’s it. I almost never hear leaders or even educators, talk about the value of education beyond its contributions to career development, job prospects and income. We are shortsighted and pathetic.
Wasn’t making fun of Biden for using teleprompters because that meant he was old and feeble and unqualified a big thing for trump and his minions not long ago?
Anger? Chaos? Excuse me but many Republican representatives have assured me that this was all very calm and patriotic and proper.
It’s not surprising that the lot of them are a self interested bigots. For some reason I continue to be surprised at just how intellectually weak these men tend to be and how willing they are to voice their ignorance. These guys either lack a lot of self awareness, or they’re just thriving in the post-reality culture that seems to be taking hold.
Nonstop whining is actually very very manly.
A further symptom of the fascism currently metastasizing across our society — fueled by greedy self-interested Republicans and facilitated by a cowardly self-interested Democrats
I’m old enough to have lived through the advent of the World Wide Web. I was so enthusiastic about the potential of these technologies. It was going to finally democratize information and do away with misinformation and pseudoscience, and promote critical thinking, freedom and democracy. I crafted an entire career around my optimism about this stuff. It’s now obvious in retrospect that none of that happened and we have collectively regressed on all those fronts. I’m not making a causal claim about damage that the internet might have done. I don’t know if this stuff would have happened anyway. But, it certainly didn’t deliver on the promise we were so excited about. IMO it all went wrong when we handed the keys to the whole thing over to commercial entities.
Why should anyone believe either of those processes are possible anymore, now that the president has been granted the power to coerce members of both branches through threat of force?